Pine

Pine is high concept hampered by poor execution. Its premise is solid; Humanity never ascended to become the dominant species. Mankind is pushed from its home and forced to find a place in a world filled with horrific monsters and unusual creatures. You take control of a boy who must unearth lost technology and play politics with the other residents of the world.
Pine's biggest draw is its living world. The factions actually exist. You will see traders moving between cities, foragers racing you to gather resources, and warbands moving to capture new territory. Pine's map will change as land is lost and tribes assert their authority. You as the player can have a massive impact on how the various tribes develop. Delivering food and supplies to a town will help it grow. As you help one race its growth is reflected in a stronger presence on the map. Technology you discover allows you to help or hinder a settlement. You eventually get the ability to call raids and can push a race you dislike back to a single territory. Its all really cool and surprisingly well developed for an indie game.

The issue is a linear story that directly conflicts with the sandbox. The main quest forces you to be friendly with each of the races in order to do their quest line. You can choose the order of the quests but you have no choice but to work with each of them. I frequently had to spend time raising reputation with a faction that I had been fighting for hours just to do a single quest. Raising reputation for one race reduces it for others based on the current dynamic politics. I actually never beat the game because I was forced to help a race I didn't care about attack a settlement for a race that I had just spent hours growing. The constant attempt to wrangle in player agency took me out of the experience to the point that I have no desire to finish the game.
Pine is a fun game and worth the price for all its flaws. I still recommend the game because I think the developers have made something worth playing. Just go in understanding its flaws and you will probably have a better time than me.

I was going to wait until I had a few more hours into this game before I wrote a review, but I couldn't wait.
I'm 37 years old, and have been jaded by a swarm of lackluster and seemingly uninspired games that, at best, have proven to be a mere distraction without any real immersion, and at worst, have been a frustrating waste of time.
Well, this game immediately jumped out at me as a breath of fresh air in the realm of interactive story-telling. Everything is lovingly crafted from the textures of the ground to the models of seemingly insignificant plants. The controls are well above par and the animations are fluid. This game was definitely crafted with love, and it shows when playing it.
From one storyteller to another, kudos to those of you at Twirlbound. You've done something that hasn't been done for me in well over a decade; you've captured my imagination and made me get swept up in setting and story.
This is going to be a classic. A timeless benchmark for action-adventure RPGs going forward to be compared against. It's about time something this well-polished and balanced came to Steam.
And Pine launched with a native-Linux client, day-one. As you said you would. Take note, other developers. This is how you do it. You follow through with what you say, and you let your passion shine through in your work.
I have a category in my Steam library that very, very few games get the honor of receiving: All Time Greats. I'm a little over an hour into Pine, and I can tell you with every fiber of my confidence that this game will be among them. You've rekindled that spark of my childhood, imagination and wonder of different worlds that I had thought died along with my innocence from my short but bitter taste of war.
I know very few people will read this, like most of what I write, but I just want you to know this game has brought me up a rung in morale and mindset. Just when I thought the soul of this world had lost its depth of character and passion, something as seemingly simple as a video game can bring to life something once long thought dead in me; my imagination.
Pine: a timeless classic structured just like a bonfire story of old.

200 character summary
Pine is a great open world adventure game, You have to fight enemies, and gather resources to craft your gear and find a safe place for what remains of the human race amoung many dangerous species.
Story 9/10
The Story is set in an universe where many species have evolved into intelligent beings, Humans are not the top of the food chain, In fact they have been pushed to a dangerous cliff where they have been living for generations. Safe from all the evolved species but the cliffs have been falling apart for a while. You play as Hue, After an accident you fall off the cliffs and you meet one of the friendly species and your adventure begins. It is up to you to find a safe home for all that's left of humanity.
Characters 7/10
The Characters are good, but there are not many of them, Most are just generic NPCs, There are a bunch of people in your village but most of them lack a bit of personality, Hue and his brother are done nicely tho, I also love the camel riding species. None of the characters have voices, They just mumble a bit strange, It could have been done better.
Gameplay 9/10
There are 5 species that fight for control over the villages, They take over villages by themselfes but you can also help certain species, You can share technology, poison a village, or set them on the wrong track to weaken or strengthen them in battle, You can also place flares to let certain species spawn and take it over directly with your help. Villages have 3 states, A B and C, C is the weakest and an A village is the strongest, You have to take A to B to C and then the species will dissapear in that place or it will be taken over if you brought a species along. When you slowly befriend one species others will grow hostile towards you, It is like the classic GTA games.
The game is mostly gathering resources, fighting hostile species and travelling a lot. You need the resources to craft gear and items, Gear is mostly optional but you need to craft certain items for several quests. The game is pretty short for a game in the genre, There are only 2 side quests 1 which is a riddle game where you have to find a few secret spots and the other requires you to find a lot of collectables. The main story felt really short, I spent most of my time gathering and exploring.
The game starts in an amazing way, But it feels a bit incomplete in the middle and towards the end, Endgame there is literally nothing to do but find all orbs and chests that remain pretty much hidden, You will get a balloon that spots collectables around it, but you still need to deploy, wait and then take it down everywhere at least once to spot them all. which is going to take a very long time, You don't really get anything for it next to an achievement, It feels more like a chore sadly.
I do think the game itself is very nice, It is something you don't see alot on Steam, You can tame creatures, There are dozens of gear items, It is a great exploring game, I especially think the setting is amazing, The idea that animals evolved into intelligent creatures to battle for control over territory. I also love the small things, Like the 3D map, The fact that you can walk while showing the map, The free choice in which Vault you go first
Aesthetics 9/10
The graphics are very nice, It feels a bit cartoony, But there is a lot of detail, I like it a lot. The game is also suprisingly light with only 3GB of storage needed. The soundtrack enhances the game very nicely, but it is a bit short.
Performance 6/10
Performance is not the best sadly, I do not get a stable 60 FPS most of the time which is a bit dissapointing, I had some drops going even lower, But It was not at the point where the framerate or stutters just get annoying. Especially when loading areas it has a few stutters, the stutters then dissapear but the low framerates are always present.
Replayability 6/10
Replaying the game would result in the same outcome, You can choose which vault you will do first but other than that the game will be exactly the same, There are no more gamemodes, difficulity settings or anything. I would not recommend replaying the game after you finished it.
Improvements
Ofcourse the performance needs to be adressed and It could greatly improve by adding content, It is obvious that the game is lacking in content after the first vault. I would love to see more missions in between, Even stuff to do end game, Maybe some random generated missions, or random encounters and maybe some minigames. I feel the big open world, all the species, backstory, resources, everything is a bit of a waste when the game feels incomplete.
Conclusion 8/10
Overal it is a great game with an amazing atmosphere. The performance is a bit of a bummer but it is certainly playable with decent framerates. I think it is an amazing idea, And a lot of things have been executed in a great way, But I feel the development and release was a bit rushed at a certain point.
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Game Info
# of players
Single Player only
Steam Cloud Save
Working fine
Controller Support
Yes, Xbox One Bluetooth Working
Achievements
Hard to find all collectables
FPS on Ultra 1080P
40- 120 fps
Launch Command
gamemoderun %command%
Installed Size
3.2GB
Issues
Not the best performance
Operating System & Hardware
OS
Arch Linux
Kernel
5.4.7
DE
Gnome 3.34.2
CPU
Intel I7-6800K Hexa Core @ 4.2 Ghz
GPU
Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080 (Nvidia 440.44 Drivers)

Even though I give PINE a recommendation, do not buy this game expecting:
- A deep, rich story-line.
- A traditional RPG experience with numerous gear sets and progression(There is some), non linear choices, meaningful dialog, and weighted decisions.
- A traditional level up system with skill trees and the like.
- City or base building mechanics.
- A fast-paced and thrilling combat system.
- More than 10 hours of main story and side mission content. (Game is very short if you stick to the main quest line)
Think of this game like the first Zelda, in which you have a linear mission to complete where both character and story progression is made through better equipment and gadgets, rather than levels and a talent tree. It's a fun game with a colorful and relaxing world full of anthropomorph animal factions that are in a constant struggle for territory. Outside of some whiskered lizards, the only enemies you need worry about are members of the factions you're hostile with, and you tend to run into them frequently on the roads and in the wild as they gather food and materials for their villages.
The combat will feel clunky and unintuitive to those who are used to more responsive controls and faster paced gameplay, but PINE seems more geared toward exploration than combat. I personally used a bow for 90% of the game, which made the few situations with a scripted battle more bearable, as I do not like the melee combat mechanics one bit.
The game has a great start and does a fantastic job of drawing you in, but the pacing goes right out the window at a certain point as you pretty much breeze through the 2nd half in no time flat, due to better equipment and the simple and somewhat shallow storyline. About 3 hours in, you'll realize you've experienced 80% of what PINE is.
That said, for a $25 game with a small and talented team of dedicated developers, you get your money's worth(my opinion). No more, no less.

From my playing time so far, i can say the following:
Pros:
-Beautiful graphics
-Reasonably immersive atmosphere
-Decent size of world
-Enjoyable relaxing gameplay overall with easy little puzzles here and there, adequately challenging enemies, and good overall game mechanics.
-Awesome music that fits the setting (beautiful valleys / war / etc).
-Big battles between species are great (until you get pulled in xD).
-Handy Auto save + manual save system.
Cons:
-Encountered very minimal audio bugs where the characters voice didnt activate with the on screen text.
-Performance could be improved imo. Still playable nonetheless.
TL;DR: I sometimes briefly forget this is an indie game.
Might update after playing more.

I finished this ~$20 title in about 22 hours.
For a game developed by about 7 people, this was fantastic. This isn't a AAA title. This isn't Zelda. This is a fleshed out enough/ openish world that has bumps and bruises, but is also completely worth the price.
Just gonna keep this short: I really enjoyed it (even with it's flaws).

It's The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on steam